“Unit21 was head-and-shoulders above any of the solutions we looked at. The ability to use the no-code natural language interface to customize processes and automation to our business needs has been a big win.”
Matt DiGiacobbe
Chief AML Officer at DriveWealth
Company Facts
Company fact 1
$1 Billion
Company fact 2
100,000
Company fact 3
23 Across Ohio & Michigan
Company fact 4
285
THE PROBLEM
Matt leads the development, implementation, and administration of all aspects of DriveWealth’s BSA/AML Compliance Program. His department handles both financial crimes compliance as well as fraud. Matt’s objective is to balance growth with risk management, so when the AML and fraud detection system they had in place could not scale with them as they grew, he knew it was time to consider a new solution.
DriveWealth’s method of tracking payments could not keep up with the shifting patterns of anomalous transactions, which were creating a high rate of alerts that turned out to be false positives. Along with many false positives, creating and filing suspicious cases to FinCEN was a highly manual and time-consuming process for their five-person compliance team.
“You get to a point where your business has grown so much, and you don’t have a case manager in place, so you’re saving things in shared files and managing everything the best you can, but that only takes you so far.”
Unfortunately, the team spent several hours on Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) filing, which took away from focusing on case investigations and severely impacted the team’s productivity. This led DriveWealth to search for a scalable solution that their team could easily manage as they grew.
As a startup, they ultimately sought a solution that could allow them to be hands-on without investing in building dedicated teams for risk analytics, financial crimes, and IT.
TLDR: Problems
Why Unit21
“We were looking for a tool that is flexible to our specific needs as a growing global business. Primarily, we needed something that could help us properly manage that risk without bringing on additional headcount.”
Customizing transaction monitoring rules to their specific business needs and automating manual case management tasks were key priorities. They were also looking for a versatile solution that could take on any unexpected challenges.
“Unit21 was head-and-shoulders above any of the solutions we looked at. The ability to use the no-code natural language interface to customize processes and automation to our business needs has been a big win.”
After vetting several options, Matt chose Unit21 with the confidence that the platform’s offerings had the potential to make a positive impact on DriveWealth’s business goals.
TLDR: Results with Unit21
“What’s versatile about Unit21 is that it can monitor any kind of data. We've had non-AML instances in which we’ve configured the tool to build rules to detect fraudulent activity on our platform, resulting in over 1,000 account closures in the past year—a 10x increase from the prior year.”
customer quote citation
THE RESULTS
DriveWealth considered several providers that had both transaction monitoring and case management offerings. Now, two years in, they have built a high-performing compliance function using Unit21’s no-code transaction monitoring, rule validation, and automated case management.
They’ve been able to drastically reduce false-positive rates utilizing Unit21. Having the ability to run rules in shadow mode and validate them before setting them live is key in helping them deploy effective rules without depending on engineering resources.
“With Unit21, we are looking at things that actually present risk to our business instead of casting a wide net over everything and hoping to catch something.”
TLDR: Results with Unit21
“DriveWealth has been using Unit21 now for almost two years and I feel like we grew up together in a sense. There’s always been a strong mutual engagement and what energizes me is that there’s a willingness to challenge the status quo. I regularly share my ideas for ways we can enhance the platform, and the Unit21 team is always very receptive.”
